2023 budget approved by the European Commission

The European Commission has confirmed that Malta's 2023 Budget complies with the recommendation of the European Council.

In his budget speech last October, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana announced that workers would be receiving a statutory wage increase of €9.90 per week from January, the highest cost of living increase in more than two decades.

In November the Commission had stated that "overall, the Commission is of the opinion that the Draft Budgetary Plan for Malta is in line with the fiscal guidance contained in the Council recommendation of 12 July 2022".

Last July the Commission had recommended that Malta should continue to support households and businesses most vulnerable to energy price increases. It had furthermore stressed the need to increase public investment to successfully deliver on the digital and green transformations, especially through the use of the EU’s recovery and resilience facility.

The Commission's opinion indicates that these recommendations were fulfilled in the 2023 Budget. The Commission’s experts maintained that the economic forecasts on which the Government's fiscal targets were made are plausible and favourable and that the Government's projections are "in line with the Commission 2022 autumn forecast".

The Commission's experts also stated that "the growth of nationally funded primary current expenditure is in line with the recommendation of the Council", and therefore appear to be sustainable.

The Commission's opinion also notes that next year the Government will provide assistance to families and businesses of around 3.5% of GDP to reduce the impact of energy price inflation, while investing around 3.9% of GDP to facilitate the digital and green transformation of the Maltese economy.